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A poll of U.S. voters during the midterm elections suggested that data centers were an important motivating topic for many Americans, leading some to argue that public backlash against the boom in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure construction may have helped shape the election outcome.
BBC Verify has analyzed its role in this campaign and examined the potential consequences for the AI sector.
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What did the voter survey suggest?
A poll conducted for AP and a consortium of news organizations found that 56 percent of voters surveyed considered data centers a "crucial or major" factor in their vote, while 76 percent said they were opposed to building a new data center in their community.
Hostile sentiment was considerably stronger among those who said they voted Democratic in this election.
This follows other recent Pew Research Center polls that suggested that about half of Americans think data centers are "overall bad" for the environment, household energy costs and quality of life, representing a sharp deterioration in their popularity since January.
The results of the poll of congressional voters certainly suggest a remarkable emphasis on an issue that probably would not have been on the minds of most Americans five years ago.
However, it fell far behind several key issues that people considered a "crucial or major factor" in their vote, including government corruption (90%) and the cost of living (89%).
Did the negative reactions to AI impact the Senate elections?
Three of the Senate seats won by Democrats have a significantly higher number of data centers, Texas (595), Ohio (258) and Iowa (117), than the median of 55 in all 50 states.
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Texas alone has 31 data center construction projects underway, the most of any state.
But other factors also motivated voters in these states, as elsewhere.
BBC Verify's analysis of state-level opinion polls for the Senate elections suggests that states that swung to the Democratic side either followed the national trend on data center concerns or seemed less concerned.
So we can't say how many votes or Senate seats were directly won through opposition to data centers.
But it is notable that three key states in the development of AI in the United States, Texas, Georgia and Ohio, have all elected Democrats as senators and governors who have called for increased regulation of data centers in one form or another.
These proposals include:
What could the election results mean for the future of the AI boom?
The US economy has been strongly supported in recent years by massive corporate investments in AI, particularly in the construction of data centers.
Official data shows that monthly inflation-adjusted spending on data center construction, excluding necessary IT hardware, in August 2026 amounted to $5 billion (2.9 trillion FCFA), five times more than in 2023.
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An analysis from Columbia Business School suggests that investments in AI infrastructure in the United States currently represent a larger share of the overall economy than spending on new railroads at the height of this growth period in the 19th century.
Cori Crider, chief executive of the Future of Tech Institute, a European think tank, told BBC Verify that the industry should expect new state leaders to impose conditions or even "stop the rampant construction of data centers."
Seema Shah, of global investment firm Principal Asset Management, said requiring developers to fund additional investments in the power grid, meet stricter standards around their use of resources like water, or forgo tax benefits could "increase development costs and slow new supply."
However, Heather West of consultancy Eurasia Group said temporary construction bans and new regulations could delay data center deployment, but would not stop it completely.
She said "projects already permitted or under construction will mostly continue," but that delays would affect the "next wave" of construction due to "local conflicts, longer permitting timelines and pressure to force data centers to pay for their own electricity."
Analysts at consultancy Oxford Economics said there are also strong economic incentives for politicians to avoid policies that would seriously disrupt data center construction, pointing to the tax revenue and construction jobs they generate.
Deepak Surana of the Futurum Group, a technology research firm, said he expects Texas state leaders to ultimately opt for "a negotiation, not a moratorium" on data centers to avoid any negative impact on residents' energy and water bills.
OpenAI, which has a data center in Texas and projects under construction in Ohio, committed to paying its own electricity bill in full on Thursday, the day after the midterm election results were released.
Additional reporting by Nicholas Barrett, Rob England and Christine Jeavans.
We used AI to help translate this article, originally written in English. A BBC journalist checked the translation before publication. Learn more about how we use AI.
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